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Friday, October 28, 2011

The Devils thought they took a big step in the right direction with their 3—0 win in Los Angeles Tuesday night and were hoping to build on it in tonight’s game against the Phoenix Coyotes at Jobing.com Arena.

Instead, they put forth a sloppy performance in a 5-3 loss. The Devils are now 0-3-0 all-time at Jobing.com Arena and 3-7-0 in their history in Phoenix-Glendale. Their last road win over the Coyotes was a 3-0 victory on Feb. 12, 2003 at America West Arena.

“It’s disappointing,” Devils coach Pete DeBoer said of his team’s play tonight. “You want to keep building on the good things, but again it’s early in the year and we’ve got to continue to make progress to the point where we consistently get that L.A. game and we’re not there yet.

DeBoer had warned his players at Wednesday’s practice and again this morning to be ready to play a hard-working team and the Coyotes played just as he promised. That the Devils didn’t respond in kind was their downfall.

“It felt like we had something good to build off and I don’t think we came up to the level that we wanted to tonight,” goaltender Johan Hedberg said. “The coaches told us everything about Phoenix and they did precisely that. They’re a really hard-working team with crafty players and a lot of speed. That’s exactly what they did. They have some good blueliners too that can hold on to the puck and get it to the net there. We have to start over again.”

“I don’t want to take anything away from them,” Devils captain Zach Parise said. “They came out and they played hard, but we should have been prepared for it. We were told that’s how they were going to play. I just think a lot of times we lost physical confrontations and we lost races and we made a couple of mistakes and they capitalized on them. They had 42 shots. We left Johan out to try quite a bit. It wasn’t that great an effort for us.”

The Devils got a bad break on Patrick O’Sullivan’s goal, which was kicked, but went off Bryce Salvador’s stick and, thus, allowed to stand 6:18 into the game. They were able to battle back, though, and tie it on Zach Parise’s goal with 5:45 left in the first period and then take a 2-1 lead on Mark Fayne’s goal 5:28 into the second.

An Ilya Kovalchuk tripping minor proved costly when the Coyotes tied it with a power-play goal from Ray Whitney at 11:24 and then took the lead on a delayed penalty goal by Raffi Torres with 48.8 seconds left in the second.

“We battled back,” DeBoer said. “We actually took the lead at one point there and to give that one up definitely hurt. We got caught out there on a long shift. We had a chance, I thought, to block the shot and make a play there and we didn’t and it ended up in the net. For sure that’s a momentum changer, especially late in the period.”

Although the Coyotes scored only the one power-play goal, they had four power plays to only one for the Devils.

“Too many penalties, but that wasn’t the reason we lost,” DeBoer said. “We were chasing from behind all night. They came at us in the first period and dictated the play. We had a little bit of a push back, but “for the most part we were chasing from behind all night and that’s not a good spot to be in.”

Although Hedberg has given up nine goals in his last two losses – 4-1 to Pittsburgh last Saturday and 5-3 tonight, DeBoer did not blame his goaltender. The Coyotes outshot the Devils 42-34 and had 19 shots in the first period and 15 more in the second.

“I thought he was good,” DeBoer said of Hedberg. They were shooting from everywhere. They had a lot of speed, especially early. I think they had 19 or 20 shots in the first period. I thought after that we did a little bit of a better job. We’ve got to protect him a little bit more. They used their speed tonight and we didn’t slow them down and that’s our fault.”

Hedberg felt the Coyotes earned their goals with hard work.

“I felt good,” Hedberg said. “They kept coming and the goals they were getting were and because they were working hard in front of the net they were getting to the net and they keep banging away at it and some things aren’t going to bounce our way, like they did tonight. We were trying, but it found a way to their sticks and it found a way into the net.”

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.